Making It Up As I Go Along (22 page)

Right! Himself! Well, for years and years and
years and years, since he was aged about twelve, he has been in wild bromantic love with Robert
Plant. He adored him in Led Zeppelin and in more recent decades has been a fan of Mr
Plant’s other groups and collaborations.

I, too, have been a big fan of Mr Plant’s.
When I was fifteen, I had a boyfriend with excellent taste in music. Actually, it was his older
brother who had the excellent taste in music and even though the older brother hated me
(it’s grand, all grand, I hated him too, it was fine) he let us listen to his records.
(Yes, actual vinyl records.)

And many of those excellent records were by Led
Zeppelin, so I was well versed in their ‘oeuvre’ by the time I met Himself and it
was one of the reasons that convinced him that I was the perfect woman. (At this point I must
add a caveat and say that George Michael is my
actual
all-time favourite music-type
person.)

Over the years, I’ve been to Robert Plant
gigs. There was one night, many years ago, when Robert (you’ll have noticed I’m now
referring to him as ‘Robert’ as if we are friends …? Yes, well, pay heed)
… yes, there was one night when Robert was coming to Dublin to do a gig and I
couldn’t go because I was down the town learning how to make beef casserole. And when
Himself came home (it was late), I woke up to ask him how it had gone and he said, all dreamy
and star-struck, ‘He was a golden rock god …’
And I
couldn’t get a word of sense out of him for several subsequent days.

When Led Zeppelin reformed for that one gig in
2007, we paid a large sum of money to a charity for tickets. And in more recent years
we’ve seen Robert with Alison Krauss (twice) and with the Band of Joy. So we are TRUE
BELIEVERS.

Right. Having established these facts, can I fill
you in on some more stuff, basically about my day-to-day life. See, you might think that I live
a high-octane life of extreme glamour, but I really don’t. I eke out a small, local
existence in a suburb that is partly pleasant and partly
un
pleasant. (It is on the sea
(pleasant) and they welcome you to the neighbourhood by burgling your house
(
un
pleasant). Do you see? Pleasant and
un
pleasant. Yin and yang.)

And the people I cross paths with are not fabby
famous types but the likes of my mammy, the Redzers, Posh Kate and Posh Malcolm, Steve from DHL,
Mary and Owen from round the corner, Fuzzy Mahon, Lovely Judy, Nawel from the second-hand
furniture shop, and occasionally Tom Dunne, but only when I’m down the town and looking
spectacularly dreadful.

I’m very happy with my set-up. But the odd
time, I leave my pleasant/
un
pleasant suburb and am thrust into a situation that is
extremely glamorous and sometimes during these glamorous events I meet people who are very nice;
and that happened to me recently. I was at a thing and got talking to a wonderful, wonderful
woman who is a great raconteur and as an adjunct to an anecdote she mentioned that Robert Plant
was her neighbour and I immediately began to choke but The Lovely Woman (henceforth known as
TLW) was already several sentences ahead of me.

I flailed and coughed and waved my hand and
eventually managed to croak out, ‘Stop! STOP! For the LOVE OF GOD, you
can’t just say that Robert Plant is your neighbour, like that’s something
unremarkable. This is the most REMARKABLE thing I’ve ever heard in my life.’

So TLW came to a halt and she thought about it
and agreed that yes, perhaps, Robert Plant
was
a bit of a legend. And a very nice man.
‘You’ll meet him next month,’ she said. ‘When you come to me for tea and
then I take you to visit a local knob-shop.’ (To buy knobs for my furniture-banjoing, not
the other kind of knob-shop …)

Well! There was so much in that sentence that was
abundantly wonderful – I was being invited to TLW’s for tea! And we’d go to a
knob-shop! And I’d meet Robert Plant! Then she said, ‘Unless he’ll be away on
tour.’ And the thing was, she was right – I knew she was because Himself and I had
tickets to see Robert Plant and the Sensational Shapeshifters in Dublin on 24 November.

So I told TLW that and she said, ‘Okay,
leave it with me. I’ll sort something out, get you backstage passes or something.’
And she said it with such confidence that I sort of believed her. But at the same time, it
seemed so incredibly impossible that I was already throwing buckets of cold water over the
flames of my appalling, painful hope.

A few weeks passed and we moved on into November
and Himself’s lovely mother, Shirley, went into hospital to have open-heart surgery and it
was all a bit tricky: the first attempt to operate on her had to be abandoned and although the
second attempt had gone okay, she was still in intensive care.

I was at home one day when Himself rang from the
car and he was on speaker and he sounded a bit odd, so I asked, ‘Are you okay?’ And
he said, ‘No, not really.’ And I thought, ‘Oh Christ! His lovely poor
mother’s after pegging it.’

So I said, very gently, ‘What is it,
sweetie?’ And he blurted out,
sort of half-crying, ‘Robert
Plant’s just rung me on my mobile. I might never be right again.’ And then we were
both shrieking and shouting and I was jumping around the room but quickly I realized I had to be
sensible. ‘Pull in,’ I said. ‘Pull in. You’re not safe to drive.’
However, it transpired he’d already had the cop-on to pull in and he promised to stay
parked until the shaking had stopped.

Eventually he came home and I sat him down and
made him tell me the whole story. ‘I was driving along,’ he said, ‘and I saw
an English mobile come up on the phone and I thought it might be work-related so I answered it
and a man said, “Can I speak to Tony?” And I said, “Speaking.” And he
said, “It’s Robert here. Robert Plant.’’’

‘Jesus Christ!’ I said. ‘Just
like that? And did you nearly crash the car?’

‘Of
course
I nearly crashed the
car!’

‘And then what happened?’

‘He said he’d leave tickets for the
after-show party at the box office for us to collect on Monday night.’

‘For real?! We’re actually going to
meet him?! And then what happened?’

‘We talked a bit about football. I said
about how his team [Wolves – even I knew that] hadn’t done so well at the
weekend.’

‘But how did you hold it together?’ I
asked, and in bewilderment Himself said, ‘I don’t know, I really don’t
know.’ And we stared at each other for a startled second, then we started shrieking again
and yelling our heads off and jumping around the place and I had to hop on to the couch because
I wasn’t getting enough spring from the floor to express the extent of my glee. It was
FECKEN FANTASTIC!!!

The night of the gig came around and we kept
saying to each
other, ‘Do you really think this will work? Do you
think it’ll really happen?’ So we promised each other that we wouldn’t get too
hopeful just in case it all went sideways. But, sure enough, at the box office there were two
passes to the after-show party.

And the gig itself was AMAZING! All the musicians
were wildly talented but it was Robert, as always, who stole the show. His voice! Still as good
as it was forty years ago. And his presence, his … yes … his
extreme sexiness
…
Witnessing him singing ‘Whole Lotta Love’ … Sacred
Heart
!

Eventually, after several encores, the gig ended
and people started to drift off home, except myself and Himself, who went to Maureen’s Bar
(as instructed) and presented our passes and I was still waiting for something to go wrong.

But we were on the list and we had to wear the
pass and in we went and the man himself wasn’t there yet, but other people were and my
eyes were flicking back and forth, like knives, as I assessed the situation. See, I’d
never before been to an after-show party and I’d no idea of the protocol. Would millions
show up? Would we queue to meet Robert or would it be every man for himself?

More people arrived. Not lots. But some.
Including some famous faces. Well, one that I recognized – Joe Elliott off of Def Leppard.
And Joe Elliott off of Def Leppard was quite alpha – he sported an air of great
confidence, an air that he very much
belonged
at an after-show party. I quickly
identified him as ‘competition’.

Every time the door opened, Himself and I would
jump, hoping that it would be Robert Plant himself, but it never was. And then it WAS! In he
came, simply
radiating
charisma. But not being grandiose either. Just being HIM.

As I’d feared, Joe Elliott off of Def
Leppard was in like Flynn! Yep – up-close and chatting away immediately and surrounded
by other members of his party. Perched anxiously on my seat, I trained my
eyes on him, thinking, ‘Please make him stop soon.’

Himself was scoping out the situation just as
much as I was and it was dawning on him that we were going to have to actually make this thing
happen.

Now, Himself is the most self-effacing man on the
planet. He’s extremely shy and unpushy, to the point where people often forget his name
and call him Tom or James or John. But he’d suddenly developed an uncharacteristic glint
in his eye. ‘Come on,’ he said to me. ‘Up you get.’

So we got up and we went and stood beside the
circle and we ‘hovered with intent’. We almost ‘hovered with menaces’.
We kept our eyes fixed on Robert in a way that demonstrated that we meant business. Joe Elliott
off of Def Leppard was still chatting away with great animation – then something happened:
a split second where Joe Elliott off of Def Leppard blinked and broke his connection with Robert
and next thing, Himself is IN!

Yes, in that tiny sliver of time he’d
shouldered his way between Robert Plant and Joe Elliott off of Def Leppard and before my
startled eyes he was introducing himself to Robert Plant!

And OH. MY. GOD!!!! Robert Plant was so, so, so,
so, so, so, so, SOOOOO lovely. He instantly and immediately knew who we were and welcomed us
warmly and then he hugged me! Yes! I HAVE BEEN HUGGED BY ROBERT PLANT! And it was a lovely hug
– full, expansive, generous, humane, everything a hug should be. And yes, it was
incredibly strange to be standing right next to a living legend, to a man who’s been part
of my life for almost forty years, to be looking into his face and thinking, ‘You’re
Robert Plant. YOU’RE ROBERT PLANT!’

But even though he was definitely Robert Plant,
we managed to talk about things – music, obviously, where Himself got a
chance to tell Robert how he has always loved him.

Then, mano-a-mano, Robert and Himself talked
about climbing mountains because Robert is fond of the mountains in Wales, and Himself is fond
of mountains in general, and we told Robert about all the lovely walks in Wicklow and he said
he’d have to come back and do some and the chances are that he probably won’t but it
doesn’t matter!

Honest to God, it couldn’t have gone
better. The funny thing is that Himself is a quiet man, I’m the chatty one, but suddenly
he’d become as voluble as bejaney, and in the end I had to give him a little ‘Settle
the head there’ look because we were hogging Robert and there were other people
‘hovering with intent’, hoping to talk to him.

So, before the ‘hovering with
intent’s turned into ‘hovering with menace’s, I prised Himself away and Robert
hugged me again and it was just as nice as the first one and he shook hands with Himself and
clapped him on the shoulder with his other hand. And off we went and as soon as we left I
whispered, ‘He hugged me,’ and Himself said, ‘And did you see the way he
clapped me on the shoulder?’

Then Himself stopped me and acted it out –
the handshake and the shoulder-clap – and repeated, ‘He didn’t just shake my
hand, he
clapped me on the shoulder
.
’

It was wonderful beyond description and the warm
glow generated by meeting him is still there. As for those people who say you should never meet
your heroes? Well, FECK them! If you get the chance,
meet
your heroes, meet them, meet
them, meet them!

Previously unpublished.

I want to tell you about my Aung San Suu Kyi
experience! (From now on I’ll refer to her as ASSK.)

It began with a phone call. I’m always
terrified when the phone rings, and I poke at it with a stick and shout, ‘Shut up, shut
up! Stop ringing. Be peaceful! Please, I implore you.’ But for once the phone wasn’t
bringing scary news, it was bringing thrilling news. It was Himself who actually answered the
call and he came back into the room, where I was huddled fearfully, and I said, ‘Who was
it? What did they want?’ And he says, ‘Would you like to meet Aung San Suu
Kyi?’

I took a good long look at him and thought,
‘Well, that’s lovely, that is, now the both of us are mad and he’d always
seemed so sane, but there we go.’ Slowly and loudly I said, ‘You can have some of my
anti-mad tablets. At least for tonight. But we’ll have to get you to a quack in the
morning.’

However, it turned out he WASN’T mad and
WASN’T having audio hallucinations. I will explain …

I’m sure you know who ASSK is, but in case
you don’t, I’ll tell you. She was under house arrest in Burma for fifteen years
between 1989 and 2010 – imprisoned by the military junta for having the audacity to be the
democratically elected leader of the country. Several times the junta told her she could leave
the country, but she knew she’d never be able to get back in, so she stayed, even when her
husband – who was living in the UK at
the time, because the Burmese
wouldn’t give him a visa – was diagnosed with terminal cancer and then died. She was
also separated from her children.

Throughout her years of imprisonment I thought
about her so much, about all the sacrifices she was making on behalf of her country, and I was
in total awe. Whenever I was asked by magazines who my favourite dinner guest would be, I always
said ASSK because if she was able to have dinner with me it would mean that things had improved
enough in Burma for her to be able to leave and that her sacrifices had meant something.

I admired her strength, her dignity, her serene
intractability, her intelligence and, most of all, her powers of endurance. I mean, it must have
been horrific. How did she survive, second by second? At what stage did she realize she was
Burma’s ‘chosen one’ and all the personal sacrifices which that entailed? When
did she realize that her personal attachments and love for her family and her husband had to be
put to one side? How did it dawn on her that this wasn’t going to be over in six months or
two years or five years, that she was in it for the long haul?

It made me think of that quote (and I know
I’m not saying it right) that people aren’t born great, they have greatness thrust
upon them. And how awful that must be. ASSK was just an ordinary person – admittedly her
father negotiated Burma’s independence from Britain, but she wasn’t looking for the
role as Burma’s saviour.

So, as I said, I’d cared about her and
worried about her for a long time. I knew that Amnesty International were doing their best for
her (sorry, veering off a bit here. I was just thinking that even when I was living in London in
my twenties and drinking my head off and spending the electricity money on shoes and was
totally skint, I coughed up enough lolly to be a member of Amnesty
International).

Anyway, in November 2010 she was finally freed
from house arrest and felt that the ruling junta had made enough concessions to enable her to
leave the country.

Now, I don’t know exactly what happened,
but between Amnesty International and Seamus Heaney and Mary Robinson and Bono and maybe other
people, and forgive me if I haven’t listed them, she was persuaded to visit Dublin and
accept the Amnesty Ambassador of Conscience award. She was coming to Dublin
for literally
six hours
, between accepting the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo (twenty-two years after she was
awarded it) and going to Britain. And it was decided to hold a concert in her honour in Dublin.

The tickets sold out in a nanosecond and I was
very disappointed not to get one, but that was that …

And then came the phone call from a mystery
benefactor offering me two tickets. (The mystery benefactor was not actually a mystery to me,
but they’ve asked for anonymity in case all their friends and family round on them and
screech, ‘Why didn’t you invite ME, you selfish article!!!!’ Indeed, what IS a
mystery to me is why I was the person chosen to be invited, but I am not going to analyse the
situation, I’m just really, really, really, really, really, really grateful.)

There was just one fly in the ointment … I
was going to be in Poland for the football. ‘Football!!!!’ I scorned.
‘Football!!! You think I’d miss the ASSK concert just because of some oul’
football!’

Himself and I had a chat about things and he was
very conflicted about it all, because he has also been a supporter of ASSK (even before he met
me), but in the end it was decided that I
would go to the ASSK concert and
he’d go to Poland. As it transpired, I was able to go to Gdansk for the massacre by Spain
and I flew back to Dublin on Sunday.

Now, I’m skipping out
so much –
the fun in Gdansk when we weren’t being massacred by the Spanish, my happy hour in
Oslo changing planes, my lost suitcase, my lost car, my shame at the car-park exit, the fact
that I hadn’t a single thing to wear to the ASSK concert because the one good dress that
still fits me was in the AWOL suitcase, along with all my make-up – but we’ll
fast-forward to Monday, when I picked up my mammy at three o’clock to go to the event.

When we arrived at the theatre, it was mobbed
with media! Television stations from around the world, photographers, journalists, satellite
dishes, a big stage set up in the outdoors. The excitement was indescribable. The mammy and I
were brought to a reception room and ALL KINDS of hobnobs were hobnobbing, then I got up to get
my mammy a cup of tay and brushed shoulders with – as in LITERALLY my shoulder brushed
against hers – Vanessa Redgrave!
That’s
the calibre of hobnobs we’re
talking!

Myself and the mammy were paralysed with nerves.
Canapés and stuff were put out on tables but our joint self-esteem was too low to allow us
to eat. But after a long time had passed and none of the hobnobs had spoken to us, she gave me a
nudge and in a low voice said, ‘Hop up there and get us a couple of bikkies.’ There
was an impressively WIDE selection of biscuits, but I cleared the platter of all the Bourbons
and brought them back to her and we ate them and after a while I got up and went to another
platter and took all the Bourbons off that and we ate them too – it looked like none of
the hobnobs were eating anything – and after a while we’d eaten every single Bourbon
biscuit in the place.

Then! Finally we were told
to go ‘below’ to take our seats. But we had to go to the loo! And we went the wrong
way looking for it. So then we had to go back through the biscuit room and out the other side,
and the staff were clearing things away and looked startled and alarmed at our reappearance, and
I was beginning to panic. ‘Quick, Mam!’ I was yelping. ‘Quick!’

‘I’m going as quick as I can,’
she said. ‘I’ve arthritis!’

‘I KNOW,’ I said, dragging her
towards the Ladies. ‘But you’ll just have to put it to one side for today. Pretend
you’re young! We can’t be late. It’s Aung San Suu Kyi!’

We found the Ladies and then we made our way back
through the biscuit room, where the staff had nearly finished clearing up and were looking
really, really worried about us, so much so that I thought one of the lovely waiters was going
to throw Mam over his shoulder just to get her to her seat in time.

‘Wouldja come ON,’ I said to her,
heedless of who heard me. I can’t handle being late at the best of times, but ASSK is my
hero of heroes. ‘I’m COMING,’ she said. And then we were in the lift and then
we were in the lobby and then we got to the auditorium – just in time for the announcement
that we ASSK’s plane had been delayed and the concert wouldn’t be starting for
another half-hour. All credit to Mam, she said nothing, she didn’t even pinch me and
she’d have been
well entitled
.

We took our seat and, amigos, we were
surrounded
by hobnobs – the mayor of Dublin was in the row behind us, the
fiddler Martin Hayes was two rows in front of us. People whose names we didn’t know but
who certainly LOOKED like hobnobs were on both sides of us … and then a ripple started.
Like a breeze blowing over a field of corn. Electricity starting moving through the crowd and
murmurs of, ‘She’s here, she’s here, she is, she’s here.’ And
then! There she was! Aung San Suu Kyi! Free! And on
the small little rock
that is Ireland! Climbing down the steps of the Grand Canal Theatre. I thought I was going to
pass out. To be so close to this woman whom I’d admired and cared about for the last
twenty-two years. For all that she’d done and all that she symbolized. To be in her
presence was one of the most moving experiences of my life.

Everyone was going mad and standing and cheering
and clapping and taking photos (even though we’d been told no photos). And eventually she
took her seat –
in the row in front of me and the mammy
– accompanied by
Bono and Seamus Heaney and other bigwigs. At this stage I’d have been happy to go home,
the night just couldn’t get any better, but the concert started and it was utterly
brilliant.

All kinds of artists – I’ll say some
of them: Declan O’Rourke, Dónal Lunny, Angélique Kidjo, Damien Rice, Bob Geldof,
and Saoirse Ronan, who read one of Seamus Heaney’s poems.

But – for me, anyway – the most
mesmerizing performance was from Martin Hayes. I’d seen him once before, so I knew how
gifted he is, but he just came on, humble as can be, one man and a fiddle and a grand head of
hair (his hair alone deserves a credit) and started playing slow. And I don’t know how he
does it, but he quietens people, he casts a calming spell and then starts to gather people up,
like a fisherman tightening the ropes on the net of a big catch. He started playing faster and
people were with him, sort of attached to him, in captivity to him. He played faster and faster,
and many of the foreign hobnobs, who’d flown in from around the world just to see ASSK,
started to consult their programmes, thinking, ‘Just who IS this man?’ Martin played
faster and wilder, and it was hard to believe that the sounds and the emotions were coming from
just one man, and when he finished up he brought the house down. He is AMAZING. He made me
so proud to be Irish, and it was a fittingly magnificent performance for
ASSK.

Then came the moment everyone had been waiting
for: Aung San Suu Kyi took the stage. She’s very beautiful and she looks very young, even
though she was sixty-seven on Tuesday and has endured a lot of physical and emotional
deprivation. She wore simple clothes and a flower in her hair and she spoke with aching
sincerity. One of the things that affected me most was when she said, ‘I had no idea so
many people cared.’ And I was thinking, ‘If only you
knew
.’ If only
she’d been able to feel the collective love and concern and admiration from around the
world all these years.

But maybe she intuited some of it, because how
else did she keep going?

It made me think about all the people, all the
individual human beings, around our globe who campaigned for her, or who paid a small sum every
month to Amnesty, or who refused to go on their holidays to Burma, even though there are
magnificent hotels and resorts there (built by slave labour), simply because she had asked us
not to, and it made me aware of how powerful any individual is, once they align themselves with
others with the same beliefs.

Then there was more singing and at the end all of
the artists were on the stage and everyone, including the audience, was singing ‘Get Up,
Stand Up’, and I swear to you it was like a religious experience, it was utterly
transcendent.

ASSK was hurried outside – things were
running much later than had been anticipated – to receive the freedom of the city, and Mam
and I were despatched to a reception room and were told that after the ceremony outside, ASSK
would be ‘doing a quick walk through’ the room and that there ‘might be an
opportunity to meet her’. And I got the message: there wouldn’t
be an opportunity to meet her. And that was okay.

It was a long, thin room and it was rammed with
hobnobs, far, far more than at the earlier do, and I was starting to think that maybe we should
just go home, that we’d had a wonderful time and there was no point waiting, when a good
Samaritan – and I’ve no idea why she chose me to be the recipient of this bountiful
news – whispered me a little whisper: that ASSK was not going to come through the door
everyone was expecting her to come through, that she was going to come in at the far end of the
room.

I didn’t know whether or not to believe
this person; I didn’t think this person was deliberately misleading me, but I thought they
might have it wrong.

Nevertheless, I made up my mind to chance it.
First I consulted with my mammy, who urged me to go it alone. ‘I’m old and
decrepit,’ she said. ‘I’ll only slow you down. I’ll mind your bag. Off
you go and do your best.’ So I made my way towards the far end of the room, where the
crowds were thinner and thinner and eventually there was no one at all. Wondering if I was being
taken for a right eejit, I loitered by the door …

And suddenly it was all action! Organizey men
appeared beside me and there were walkie-talkies and urgent words and extreme tension.
‘Just a quick walk through the room,’ they were saying. ‘She’s exhausted
and she’s got a plane to catch.’

With a shock of surprise, I realized I was in
exactly
the right place, and apart from the organizey men there was no one else near
me, not for yards. Then someone was saying, ‘Three seconds, two seconds, she’s
coming, she’s coming …’